Tokoroa And Putaruru Bridge Clubs

Maria and Peter
Twelve tables turned out for Putaruru's annual tournament today. Top finishers for the home club were the intermediate and junior pairing of Peter Kraakman and Maria Leach. They finished above gold grandmaster Ian Clayton and his grandmaster partner Yuzhong Chen. An outstanding performance by these minnows who finished in joint 6th position.
Winners today were Auckland based Anthony Hopkins and Alan Dormer.
Alan and Anthony
Here they are with Putaruru President Eileen Barker.
Runners up were another junior punching well above her weight Rochelle Van Heuven from Te Aroha with Waikato region all rounder Ross Stewart.
Rochelle and Ross
The third place spot was a tie three-quarters Kalma family. Hermanna and Henk and scorer for the day Anna with Cambridge's Michael Neels.

Dexter and Rodney
A stunning performance in the morning saw Rodney and Dexter clear of the field at lunch with an outstanding 60.80%. They won a session prize and combined with their afternoon score finished 8th overall. This leaves them both in joint 4th place in the 2016 Waikato Bays Junior Champions League.

Eileen and Anne
Putaruru and Tokoroa players have been showing some strong form in recent tournaments. After winning the top non-open pair at Heat 3 of the WAP on Sunday Eileen and Anne topped that off by winning the Hamilton Ladies Day intermediate competition on Tuesday. Willy and Graeme from Tokoroa meanwhile finished the top Intermediate/Junior pairing at the WAP on Sunday. Many congratulations to them all and it is great to see such strong players at the tournaments with the defence of the clubs' regional interclub trophy in the not too distant future.

Here is your chance ...
Waikato Bay are sponsoring THREE bridge players from the region to National Congress. This is the national bridge championship of NZ and takes place at the end of September/start October each year. It is hosted this year in Hamilton. There are conditions to qualify to go into the hat ... read about them on the attached flyer. If you take part in tournaments in the region quite regularly and have never been before you just need to register to be in for a chance to win!

Dexter and Rodney
Congratulations to Dexter and Rodney who had a stunning morning at the Cambridge Junior Tournament. With 59.28% they were top East West out of 14 tables. In the afternoon they brought in a 50% to finish 7th overall out of 28 pairs.

Two very solid performances saw Graeme and Warren finish 7th out of 44 pairs in the Hamilton Restricted Tournament.
Graeme and Warren
57.42 in the morning followed by 55.24 in the afternoon saw them with only Grandmasters ahead of them in the final results. A stunning performance by these two Tokoroa players.

Dexter
Warren and Dexter headed off to Te Puke for a Restricted Tournament on Saturday 5 March. A large and experienced field of 19 tables saw Warren and Dex struggling to find cohesion in the first session. However they clearly had something special in their lunch boxes because they rose from bottom to top of the NS field with a magnificent 62.33% in the afternoon! Congratulations to them both.

Flying the flag for Tokoroa at Heat 1 of the WAPS were the non-open pairing of Graeme Farrell and Willy Ryder.
Best non-open pair Heat 1 - Tokoroa's Graeme Farrell and Willy Ryder
In a tough field of open players Willy and Graeme scored a tremendous 61.83% in the first session. They followed that up with 50.46 in the afternoon to come 7th overall in a field of 40 pairs.

Dexter's Achievement: Congratulations Dexter. A great achievement!

Eileen spotted this story in the NZ Herald ...

http://nzh.tw/11584884